


In Flagrante Delicto

by wreathed



Category: The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Genre: F/M, Fire, Hate Sex, M/M, Masturbation, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-03
Updated: 2009-02-03
Packaged: 2017-10-22 16:44:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/pseuds/wreathed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Several years after Offred has escaped Gilead's oppressive regime, the capital experiences a major uprising. A remote and unfulfilled Nick meets someone that he never expected to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Flagrante Delicto

The city was on fire.

Such a simple symbol of destruction and rebellion: orange flames engulfing great heavy marble houses of power, grand and unemotive, cold. Charred shells of official cars line the streets, their silhouettes framing terror. The blaze bleeds into the dark shades of the sky, glowing against the black and drowning out the distant stars.

It's an attack that's doing something, it's _action_ , and that's better than what the recent past has been, a place filled with unchallenged wrongs.

Nick leans against the window of his garage-flat, one strong hand gripping the chipped windowsill, tendons in his fingers sharp against the pallid colour of the walls. What he can see - colour, an inferno as hot and violent as all-consuming passion - is energising to him, not wrong.

The buildings may be burning, but the tension Nick carries in his servant's shoulders is not melting away; far from it, it's building in an angry crescendo, a torrent of fatigued emotion. He's waiting for something. Waiting to get caught. Waiting for Frederick to call to him from the house. Waiting for his saviour, but he's already sent her away, let her escape.

There is a knock on the door.

There is a quick pause (someone in the background another siren screams) and then the lock is knocked open with a quiet sort of click. _This is it,_ Nick thinks, _they've got me._ He wonders briefly why he's barely tried to do anything about it, and then remembers.

He doesn't expect to see someone unshaven and in heavily torn clothes - someone else's Guardian uniform, a disguise, he can tell; someone he's never seen before but someone with a look in his eyes that Nick knows well. Muted wildness, the eyes of those who have loved and lost, or the eyes of those who are lost.

“This is the right place, isn't it?” he grunts out, like he's in an angry hurry, not like there's a city disappearing across the horizon behind them.

“This isn't the main house. I'm just the driver. If you're here to see the Commander of-”

“No, I'm not. Where is she? I haven't got much time.” He laughs humorously, widens his eyes. “We're gonna make a run for it again!”

Nick's speed of speech doesn't share the other man's urgency. “Who _are_ you?” he asks, knowing it's unlikely he'll get an answer, a proper answer.

“Luke Delowery. I'm-” and then he looks up like he's checking or confirming something. “I'm June's husband.”

Nick doesn't speak. He doesn't need to. He's met the other man who knows her name, and he's surprised to find he's jealous.

“Tell me! Tell me where she is; you're Mayday, you must know, you...you!” Luke reaches Nick in two strides, two fingers slipping in between the collar of Nick's shirt and his pounding jugular vein, touch pressing painfully into his skin. Nick grits his teeth and looks downwards.

Nick's not a good man, but he's better than most. He only lies to liars. “She escaped. She could be anywhere now. I'm sorry.”

“I've risked...”. Luke couldn't comprehend.

“You thought she wasn't strong enough to leave. Leave and actually get away?”

“Is anyone?"

"She nearly stayed by _choice_. Things changed. There were things she wanted here-"

"I knew she'd probably given up on me, thought I was dead, moved on-” Luke broke off, Nick flinched. "But I didn't realise...you've slept with her, haven't you? Were you her ticket out?” He spits the words out like over-sour sweets.

 _Yes. Not in the way you think._ “No.”

“No to the child or no to the fuck?”

“She couldn't wait for you forever. I think she even loved me.”

Luke insinuates his body closer, presses himself so that Nick is pushed right into the wall. Bucks, almost threateningly. It's the same frustration they feel, all the same, running into everything else and each others' like interweaving tributaries, fear and hatred and unsated lust thrown together.

They don't touch each other, just themselves, hidden hands rustling so that nothing is visible. It's movement muffled by fabric. Its confusion and anger and heavy breathing, unthinking and a high school dare. It's over in minutes.

“Go,” Nick says. What crimes he's precisely referring to this time is unclear. “They'll catch you, both of us. Go.”

Both look at each other, but they aren't eye-to-eye. There's a common theme; they both want release deep inside her and to never let go, but the rush of warmth only covers their own hands and all they've got to hold on to is the thin air they breathe.

"Heard anything about our child?" Luke asks, frightened, just before he shuts the door.

 _She's not yours anymore,_ Nick thinks. "No, sorry," Nick says, sneering. "Nothing at all."

The door shuts with the same sound it opened with. With nowhere to go, Luke makes for the start of an end hundreds will be killed for and Nick neither joins nor stops him because he knows the feeling of having nothing to lose.


End file.
